The College of the Redwoods Creative Arts Gallery and Art Department are proud to present the 2009 Art Faculty Exhibition at the Eureka main campus.  The show will run from November 17, 2009 through February 9, 2010, but will be closed over the winter break between semesters.  On the evening of Tuesday, November 17 there will be a public opening reception for the artists from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.  A second reception will also be held during the spring semester, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 21. 

The exhibition will feature several hand-selected, recent works by each of CR’s skilled and accomplished art instructors.  Having all seventeen artists together in one exhibition offers students and the community a unique opportunity to meet their instructors outside of the classroom, as artists, and to view new ideas and ways of working independently and creatively.  The show will also give students the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the work of both new and familiar faces in the department, as well as catch a glimpse of what it looks like to continue being an artist outside of the structured environment of an art class. 

This year's art faculty show is a veritable assortment of mediums, techniques, and styles - a showcase of the wealth of talent and ideas existing in the department.  Throughout the exhibition there can be found strong undercurrents of innovation and interdisciplinary practice; a melding of traditional and new applications of process, full of inspiring possibilities. 

Ceramicists Kit Davenport, Mary Mallahan, Shannon Sullivan, and Dave Zdrazil will each be presenting new, and very diverse works in clay.  Davenport's three ceramic sculptures are wonderful examples of the attentively glazed and painted surfaces so characteristic of her work.  Mallahan's repurposed ceramic vessels commemorate the divergent boundary between art-making and family life.  She has revisited discarded clay forms from her studio, reforming them into commemorative urns of familial histories.  

For this exhibition, Sullivan has created three small ceramic sculptures that explore clay as a fine art material.  Fellow ceramics instructor, Dave Zdrazil's focus is on the more functional forms of ceramics.  Melded with an exploration in the materiality of clay and the spontaneous process of fire, the simplicity of his forms serves as a vehicle to his interests in geological and pyrotechnic processes. 

Newcomers to the drawing department, Alastair Bolton and Mark Soderstrom will each be working with assembling found elements, Bolton from the natural and Soderstrom from the man-made.  Bolton's work is an assemblage of the natural and organic as it interacts with man-made geometries and spaces.  Soderstrom selects pristine, found objects to create new and carefully arranged groupings that investigate the changing perceptions of society and the individual.        

Department head, Cindy Hooper will be presenting a very special viewing of her new series of art films, “Anthropogenic Aquascapes”. These three short films are centered on the historical, environmental, and political issues surrounding the artificial control and manipulation of industrialized rivers in Mexico and the United States.  The films will be playing on a continuous loop during the gallery's open hours in the newly re-acquired and adjoining small gallery.   

The photographic works of digital art instructor, Michael Jenner, and photography instructor, Bruce Van Meter will offer a unique glimpse into the respective worlds of digital and darkroom photography.  Both artists share a love affair with film and manual cameras, yet differ in how these negatives are made into photographs.  Van Meter, with silver prints and his delicate hand-coloring, and Jenner with her sophisticated use of digital manipulation, will each demonstrate the beauties and strengths of both traditional and newer methods available to photographers.     

Also a part of the digital department, artist and notorious craft blogger, Garth Johnson is introducing two ceramic pieces created on his recent trip to China.  He is joined in his exploration of surface by drawing instructor, Dean Smith, who has chosen to work with oil pastels on sheets of steel.  His colorful shoe-portraits are given a greater depth and presence through their contrast with the rough surface and texture of the industrial metal. 

Painters, and drawing instructors, Claire Joyce and Erin Whitman offer up two very delectable and lush works on panel.  Whitman uses traditional acrylics in a manner that almost duplicates the luminosity and sparkle of Joyce's less traditional glitter paintings.  A self-portrait using only meticulously mixed glitter and glue, Joyce's "painting" is one that longs to be appreciated in-person.  Whitman paints to understand desire, specifically the thin line between attraction and repulsion.  Her gloriously seductive painting assays the fleeting appeal of a slowly rotting cake.           

Drawing and painting instructor, Julie McNiel will be showing two works on paper.  Her mixed-media drawings are layered and complex narratives, seamlessly blending Chinese fables with more personal meaning.  Michael Edwards teaches jewelry and small-metals classes at CR.  His work for this show is an investigation of the fine line between art and craft that his chosen medium of jewelry so often walks.  He is interested in the interplay of his work as artist, jeweler, and teacher.  

Becky Evans' drawings are monumental labors of love; her organic abstractions are deeply rooted in the naturally occurring patterns that she has harvested over the course of hundreds of morning walks.  She teaches drawing at the CR Arcata Site.  Emily Silver teaches watercolors, and her painting follows a similar vein as Evans' drawings.  She works with watercolors and natural sediments, pulling content from her own spiritual and intellectual experiences through painting specific desert spaces.   

The Creative Arts Gallery at College of the Redwoods is located on the Eureka main campus, via the north entrance, and is open from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The gallery will be closed November 26 for the Thanksgiving holiday and also December 11 through January 18 for winter break. 

For more information, or to make an appointment to view the show outside of the gallery's regular hours, please call the division office at 707-476-4558.  Call also for Spring 2009 gallery hours.